Remember the Dark Universe? It’s okay if you don’t, the ambitious and ultimately misguided attempt at a shared mythology based on Universal’s stable of classic monsters was gone in the blink of an eye, with Tom Cruise’s The Mummy turning out so poorly that even the studio admitted the entire idea was a failure.
Reinventing tragic figures as the stars of mega budget blockbusters powered by A-list names was bizarre to begin with, but it wasn’t even Universal’s first attempt at updating their iconic roster of things that go bump in the night, although everyone outside of the production tried pretty hard to pretend Dracula Untold never existed almost as soon as it was released.
After shooting had wrapped, an epilogue was tacked on during reshoots that moved the action to the present day, which was designed with having Luke Evan’s Vlad become a recurring part of the Dark Universe alongside Charles Dance’s Master Vampire, only for The Mummy director Alex Kurtzman to immediately disregard it as canon.
Dracula Untold performed surprisingly well on Netflix at the beginning of this year, and it’s now pulled off the same trick on Hulu, having risen as high as eighth place on the streaming service’s most-watched list as per FlixPatrol. Not bad for a box office bomb that could only muster a 25% Rotten Tomatoes score, and wasn’t even wanted by the franchise it was supposed to launch.